Would Term Limits On Congress Mean Better Government?

October 14, 1990|By Stephen Chapman.

Who says we live in a democracy? In the last six presidential elections, going back to 1968, Democratic nominees have gotten 43 percent of the popular vote. Yet they`ve won only 18 percent of the electoral votes. Even more unjust, they`ve won just 17 percent of the elections (one, that is). Their sole victory, in 1976, came only with the help of the worst presidential scandal in American history.

Under normal circumstances, it`s clearly impossible for the Democrats to capture the White House, despite all the people who vote for them. If Democrats are getting 43 percent of the votes, isn`t it absurd that they don`t get 43 percent of the presidents? Or is our electoral system supposed to weight the scales so much in the direction of Republicans that Democrats have no chance and the voters` preferences are endlessly frustrated?

If I sound sillier than usual today, it`s no accident. The argument stated above is absurd, which is why Democrats don`t make it. But it`s no more dubious than the one Republicans are making, which has produced a movement to limit the number of terms a member of Congress can serve.

Republicans are exasperated at their failure to gain control of Congress. True, they had a majority in the Senate for six years during the 1980s, but they haven`t dominated the House since Eisenhower`s first term. They note the phenomenally high re-election rates of incumbents (96 percent in the last three elections) and make dark comparisons to the British House of Lords and the Supreme Soviet.

Since they know Americans prefer Republican policies-they elect Republican presidents, don`t they?-the GOP faithful conclude that the persistent Democratic grip on Congress can be the result only of sinister forces aimed at subverting the will of the people. Evicting members after 12 years, they claim, would foil those sinister forces.

The advocates of term limits think they have the public firmly on their side-the same public that keeps electing all those Democrats to Congress. Surveys show that Americans think Congress does a lousy job, and they`re looking for ways to spark improvement. According to one poll, 61 percent of Americans favor restrictions on congressional terms.

But if Americans are dissatisfied with Congress, they are free to do something about it, with a simple device known as the ballot. Most of them, while loathing Congress, say they like their own representative just fine.

Maybe that`s because they gullibly believe everything they read in the taxpayer-financed mailings sent home by every member. The reason voters return incumbents with infallible regularity has something to do with the advantages of office, but it also has something to do with the fact that only 72 percent of Americans even know their congressman`s name. Ignorant voters making boneheaded choices is not a frustration of democracy. It is democracy.

The paradox of Republican presidents and Democratic Congresses likewise turns out to be not a paradox at all. Americans vote for a divided government because they want a divided government.

Polling expert Everett Carll Ladd notes in a recent issue of the Public Interest magazine that two out of every three Americans think the country is better off with the Republicans occupying the White House and the Democrats holding Capitol Hill.

Even most of the people who voted for George Bush and against Willie Horton-I mean Michael Dukakis-preferred a Democratic Congress. The strange truth is that the GOP would have an easier time winning congressional races if it could manage to lose a few presidential ones.

As for the charge that the Democrats maintain supremacy only through the crushing weight of incumbency, American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman Ornstein points out in the same publication that if it were true, you`d expect to see the GOP racking up victory after victory in those races where no incumbent is running. But since 1954, they`ve lost 57 percent of those contests.

The real defect of Congress is that members survive by indulging their constituents` desire to get all they can in government benefits while escaping all they can in government burdens. But this habit won`t vanish if members are banished after 12 years. The drug trade has lots of turnover among dealers, but as long as people want drugs, someone will supply them.

As long as Americans expect their government to let them live at the expense of everyone else, their elected officials will do their best to give them what they want. If voters don`t like the results, they shouldn`t look to Washington to find who`s to blame.